Information Technology (IT) departments are overwhelmed with various reactive support tasks and have limited resources and operating budgets to handle those support tasks. Support tasks typically include monitoring for system failures, checking and clearing log files, installing patches and updates, running backup and recovery procedures, managing and assisting end users, responding to service requests, etc.
One task that is particularly difficult for IT departments is software maintenance management. Software maintenance management typically includes checking regularly for new relevant software updates and patches for applications and operating systems, planning for the implementation of new updates (e.g., reading guides and notes to determine prerequisites and dependencies), and manually downloading, unpacking and deploying new updates, corrections, etc. Many of these tasks are time consuming and require significant IT resources to complete. Moreover, the practice of manually downloading, unpacking and deploying updates can be complicated and error prone.